Blowout

Share.

Special guest reviewers: Contra's Lance and Bill take on Majesco's sidescrolling shooter.

By Bill and Lance, Contra Soldiers

Ever since Bill finished his last assignment, wiping out hordes of aliens in the Shattered Soldier mission, the two of us (you may remember us as Bill and Lance from the campaign that's codenamed Contra) have turned our combat-hardened brains to a much more meaningful and life-affirming career choice. We've decided to become gaming journalists.

While many of you in the gaming community have appreciated our exploits in the simulated realm of videogames, we have been admiring you, the gaming public-- and especially gaming journalists, for your insightful comments on everything from whimsical plumbers to gun-wielding felons. That's why we attended the excellent Creative Writing workshop at Iowa University... to hone our writing craft as we previously honed our ability to dismantle extraterrestial terrorists. Our first assignment is the very review you're reading now. We hope you'll agree that this review is just as impressive as our triumph over the Red Falcon, or our victory in the Alien Wars.

The game we were chosen to review (hopefully as much for our writing prowess as for our familiarity with the subject matter) is the side-scrolling action game Blowout: Military Fighting Unit, from Majesco. A budget title that debuts at retail for $19.99 on the Xbox and $9.99 on the PS2, this one is hard to pass up at that price point. It may be mind-numbing twitch action, but it's cheap action, and the game is actually pretty fun, even though it lacks variation. Although until you've faced down a bunch of drooly-lipped, pointy-toothed aliens in person, we defy you to say that killing aliens is boring and repetitive.

Gameplay The story goes roughly like this: your name is Cane, a cigar-chomping space badass. You have a bunch of big guns, and an army of aliens stand in your way. You must kill them. Along the way, you will pick up even more guns and even bigger aliens will stand in your way. When it all lies smoking and dead, you will win. Not an original concept, to be sure, but one that's worked in the past.

Blowout is a traditional side-scrolling action shooter, in the vein of the very adventures we made famous--the Contra series. It would have been right at home on a previous generation console, but here it is. Like Shattered Soldier (we had to learn to snowboard for that game!), it features 3D graphics put into a 2D atmosphere. The effect works for gameplay, which is all about running side-to-side while aiming at any angle to drop approaching vermin.

The movement is handled on the left analog, and the aiming is done with the right stick. There is a full range of motion on the right stick, meaning you can aim your weapon at any of the 360 degrees of a circle at any time. If only we'd been able to aim in more than eight directions in our heyday. All of the controls feel slick, from the shooting dynamic to the jetpack, which allows Cane to get to the top of airshafts that jumping just wouldn't reach.